but this spring the one-eyed
female only laid one egg the couple begins a daily routine for five long weeks they'll
take turns incubating the egg as winter ebbs the well-practiced team seems to be
headed for success but spring is a fickle season in mid april it was a freak
snowstorm i'll never forget it the nest was being blown around by this violent
wind the snow was going absolute horizontal and it just kept reminding me of what
these birds are facing in everyday life they were well into
incubation so the
changing of the guard was always quick because you got to remember they have delicate
eggs that they're protecting and keeping warm there seemed to be shifts
of an hour hour and a half where one eagle would sit on the egg
while the other was out foraging for food through this dorm the mail sat
waiting for the female to return tragically something happened
to her we're not sure what there's so many things out there that
can work against the survival of these magnificent
birds and makes you realize
how fragile their existence actually is cold and hungry the father abandons his egg now he has lost almost everything he may find another mate and start all over again
but until then he must defend his territory alone when europeans arrived in north america the continent teamed with as many
as half a million bald eagles but as settlers advanced the raptors became
targets and their nesting trees fell to the blade for raptor specialist bob anderson the pioneer's
at
titude was simply arrogant and ignorant all birds of prey were just considered vermin
i mean they were all chicken hawks they were all bad birds be it a a bald eagle golden
eagle or red to hawk they were all shot at the start of the 20th century bald eagles were
under siege across the lower 48. alaska seemed like the last wild place and there the bald eagle
thrived but in 1917 the territory introduced a cash bounty by mid-century over 120 000 eagles had
been shot and the gravest threat was
still to come after world war ii ddt came into
widespread use to control insect pests bald eagle numbers went from decline to free fall
when i was a kid just to see a bald eagle was just a once in a lifetime experience the phones
would ring if a bald eagle was seen anywhere i mean everybody would call it be on the
front page of the paper a bald eagle with seed ddt made eggshells thin and fragile sharply
reducing the number of hatching chicks the crash was taking place so rapidly
i was just
convinced whatever eagle i saw was was just going to be a dinosaur in
my lifetime they were going to be extinct in the 1960s just over 400 nesting pairs remained
in the continental united states in the 70s two centuries after embracing an icon of wildness
the u.s declared the bald eagle endangered america's symbol of strength had become
an emblem of environmental degradation but america was not about to
forsake its troubled symbol researchers finally persuaded
congress to take action agai
nst ddt by 1973 general use of the pesticide was banned
almost immediately bald eagles started to rebound in 2007 the american eagle was removed
from the endangered species list by tapping our own better natures we
had given primal nature a second chance it was late summer and the eagle had left the nest it was a perfect opportunity to
climb the 80 feet up and investigate bob and i wanted to have a look
to see just what was on the nest wow wow look at the food up here amazing here's a skull
of some mammal the top part
of the brain of some mammal and here we've got the remains of a this is a rabbit foot
here let's see a little bit of the femur bones here and here's a feather dark feather it almost looks like it
might be from a crow possibly a duck bob and neal decide to look for
possible positions to put cameras bob is a nest cam expert one that we would
we're really hoping to install here in the next week or two were multiple cameras you
know one on this limb maybe one of th
e slim perhaps one on the other limb all pointing
into this general area the bowl of the nest i've heard of sea legs we have to have
three legs when working with this job bob will have a bird's eye view
in the coming nesting season no matter whether the single
male succeeds or fails october in the upper mississippi valley the fall weather is mild and eagles
are free from the burdens of the nest water birds soon to depart for
warmer havens are briefly abundant joining the eagles that live h
ere year round
are bald eagle migrants flying south from canada some have flown 1400 miles to find open
water this surge of eagles now turns to hunting bald eagles will sometimes chase mallards
but the river offers much easier prey coots raft together by the thousands
and these calm birds are a favorite meal a strong wind allows an eagle the rare chance
to hover like a smaller raptor the kite there's more than enough prey for every
eagle but thievery is in their nature as one hunter lands
at a muskrat hut other
eagles immediately try to steal his prize this autumn bounty is a
returning glimmer of the old days in november when the eagles are
staging on the upper mississippi there is one place far to the north that
is almost primeval an untouched wilderness this is the chilcat river in alaska where great runs of salmon bring eagles from
as far as a thousand miles away salmon have made their own epic
journey in from the sea to spawn they will die soon afterwards
but they will
sustain this great gathering of eagles as they have
done each autumn for thousands of years i've always wanted to go to the chill cat and
it was not a let down i have never seen so many eagles in one place and there can be as many
as two thousand in one small area of the river it's like going back into time being there because bald eagles do specialize often in fish
their feet are modified with tiny projections on the bottom of the toes and the pads of the feet
which actually make it easy
for them to grip fish their beaks are incredibly efficient at ripping
the flesh of fish and other prey that they catch eagles generally can go fairly long periods
without eating they have what's called a crop which is an extension of the esophagus which is a
storage bag for food when there's plenty of food around they'll take advantage of it by gorging
themselves and they can actually go after a gorge for a week to 10 days without feeding if they
have to but as soon as a bald eagle catches
something you can bet that within seconds
another one's going to come in and hassle it back along the mississippi autumn is on the wane winter makes a gentle entrance bald eagles can now walk on the river
although some seem to prefer skating gizzard shad can still be plucked up
but they will soon be entombed in ice as open water freezes over an
eagle must be ever more precise at the hatchery nest bob anderson has
been keeping an eye on the widowed male the male will always make occasional v
isits to the
nest he still maintains the territories working on his nest adding little trinkets that might make
it more attractive this particular nest is prime property it's uh you know located so close to a
prime food source and many many eagles have been vying to get into the territory now that he's
alone one approaching female would be courted after rearranging his corn husks the
male sets off to cover his territory but now another eagle buzzes the nest it's a female an aerial duet may
be a chance for the prospective
couple to size up each other's condition a healthy eagle can cruise at 40 miles an
hour in level flight and hit 100 in a dive after a few minutes with their heads
in the clouds the courtship is over romance is a luxury there's work to be done when the eagle's first land together on the nest
they're a little bit apprehensive and i think the moving around of sticks together and grass
together just kind of cements the bond it kind of creates the marriage that wi
ll only get
deeper and deeper as the weeks progress but ironically in this situation the male
has the final say even though she brings a stick and tries to put into some place the male
will grab her stick and put it someplace else we think she's a four-year-old she does have
speckles on her head but you can see a little dark streak on the top of her beak that dark
streak tells us that maybe she's a four-year-old he's got a young bride probably
coming into her first breeding season winter d
rains the last warmth from the river fresh perils appear for all the
creatures along the mississippi and now the most brutal season tiptoes in in a workshop beneath the iowa hatchery
nest bob anderson checks on his reality show in one of you what an incredible angle
of looking at the american bald eagle and there she is also and he's the boss boy this is his nest i mean he
calls the shots he's in charge of all construction no matter what she does he comes back
and rearranges it and 100 of t
he time does she brought in a little bit
of grass and if she flies off now he will go take that grass
and put it someplace else despite squabbles over decor the new couple
is starting to embrace their common purpose you can actually see them they're
bumping each other they're they're interacting there's no aggressiveness
at all a month ago they would have never tolerated this being this close to
each other it's like now they're a team we know that that they're getting close to laying
thei
r eggs when you start seeing this behavior the young female lays her
quarter pound egg before dawn exposed an egg can freeze in a minute and so the
father will need to move in for his first shift the first egg was late early in the morning we
actually missed it we saw the birds sitting in the bowl we knew that it would be soon but we were
kind of surprised to see this first egg but we can see him how careful he is with his feet his feet
are balled up and he's trying to hide his talons he do
esn't want those nails to poke a hole in
that fragile egg it's touching to watch that sensitivity that this old guy has had you know
with many many eggs probably in his lifetime if a second egg is coming it's
due two days after the first come on stand up she looks like
she's about ready to stand up but what do we have we have two eggs we've
got two eggs see this see them both so do you feel like a papa when
they hatch i'll feel like a papa now we just have to wait 35 days
from today to se
e our first baby if eagles can feel pride or joy the new parents
must be brimming over they will now work nearly unbroken shifts but even such an effort can't
guarantee that the eggs will hatch safely especially since they must survive one of the longest incubations of any
bird along the upper mississippi egg thieves abound raccoons
and crows are everywhere so each parent is highly attuned
to any sight or sound of menace and then another storm we knew a storm was coming and we really wanted
to see the first reaction of the birds waking up covered in snow so we made sure we had
our recorders running long before daylight i was at first disappointed we had
snow on the lens but it just shows how ugly the conditions really really
are this bird's covered in snow and she's screaming right now with the mail
going come and relieve me come and take my place and he does on a minnesota farm 40 miles away
another family is further along their two eaglets have already hatched
the mother
feeds her four-day-old daughter the two-day-old male hardly able to hold his
head up doesn't seem to be getting a fair share although both parents are dedicated they
have a blind spot for one particular peril one within the family sibling rivalry it's not unusual for the older eaglet
to turn on the younger and smaller in nature's cold calculation why share
your meals when you can eat more alone neil has been documenting the story from a
stifling blind just a stone's throw from the nest the
dynamics of this whole syndrome is that the
chick that's beat up becomes weaker and weaker towers he's kind of afraid to even stand
upright and the female will always feed the chick that's more robust and it's called
the cane and abel syndrome the feedings go on for about five to eight minutes sometimes
maybe 12 minutes the bigger chick is getting up to 30 or 40 pieces of food per feeding the
little one would get about six to eight pieces in the last few days we've been worried a lot
about
whether the younger smaller chick is going to survive or not so we got our fingers crossed at
little ud we call him underdog it's gonna be okay the battle will resolve
one way or another and soon water flows again at last spring
has come to the upper mississippi things are looking up for all
of the creatures along the river eagles visiting from canada now return
north to their nesting territories for year-round residents like the hatchery
couple spring means getting ready for eaglets the
first babies hatch now and you can see how
kind of inept and clumsy this young bird is she doesn't quite know what to do that baby's begging
for food and yet she's not fully responding to it and yet there's food off to the right in
the nest and these first few days were so painful for us if it wasn't for the male i
don't think the babies would have survived the eaglet is too exhausted to beg and now the mother starts to feed herself
parent and young are failing to connect suddenly the mothe
r focuses on her
chick as if seeing it for the first time she's just she doesn't know how to approach not
and she's kind of she's trying to ball up her feet she just stepped on the baby there
it's a lot different than a hard egg this shot here really just surprised
she had her tail facing into the wind the winds gusted to 40 miles an hour the
wind actually literally blew her out of the nest and she almost took the baby with her
something of an experienced bird would never do it's been a tr
ying day and
the stakes are only going up here's our young female standing up and as
you can see you know we've got our second baby that it did hatch and again you can see that
she's getting a little bit better with her feet you know already there's been a little bit of
learning i guess that's taken place and now the old man will command the guy that's so proven
that's him on the right she's stepping off now here's the adult male he's clearly fed
babies before he just walks in and just he'
ll put the food right in that baby's beak
after one or two tries he's very experienced and patient it will take the eaglet a little
practice to actually get something to eat at least in this nest there's
no sign of sibling rivalry at the minnesota farm neil waits for
the outcome of the sibling battle the sister is alive and
sassy but what about underdog finally i could see that underdog was competing he was actually getting food offered
by the female and gaining strength today he does look
better i think
little underdog might have a chance once the eaglets were six to seven weeks
old the canaan abel's syndrome was long past and they were both healthy and vigorous each day these little guys will eat the equipment
of about a half a pound to a pound of fish the demand on the parents
is increasing and they'll probably bring four or five
kills to the nest during the
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why does logo keep moving?